Overview

The Horn of Africa crisis of 2011-2012 affected 13 million people. The main focus of the crisis was across southern Ethiopia, south-central Somalia and northern Kenya. Regional drought came on top of successive bad rains and rising inflation. It ramped up a chronic livelihoods crisis into a tipping point of potential disaster by putting extreme pressure on food prices, livestock survival, and water and food availability. Armed conflict across the region compounded chronic ecological and economic vulnerability, which escalated the crisis and limited people’s survival and recovery choices. (IASC Real-Time Evaluation of the Humanitarian Response to the Horn of Africa Drought Crisis in Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya - Synthesis Report)